Ai Wei Wei’s Sunflower Seeds:

Ai Wei Wei’s porcelain sunflower seeds look absolutely real!

These sunflower seeds are unbelievably real, even close up. They are porcelain, hand painted with slip.

Not your everyday bag:

Susan Collis’ bag looks so ordinary – something you’d use to carry your laundry. Look closely – it is not woven, but constructed of paper meticulously colored with ballpoint pen and graphite. WHOA.

Hyper-realism on a different scale:

Mueck’s unbelievably lifelike sculpture of a child. Photo source: New Orleans Museum of Art

Ron Mueck makes hyper-realistic sculptures of people. The scale is off – this crouching boy is too small. Mueck uses polyester resin for the skin – you can see every toenail and wrinkle.

A ‘working’ elevator:

These tiny elevators’ doors open and close.

Maurizio Cattelan’s tiny elevators are really popular. The doors open with a ding and close with a tiny thud. Folks were crowded around the artwork waiting for the doors to open.

LIFELIKE originated at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  It closes at MCASD on May 27 and reopens in Austin, Texas in June. If you are in town, check out the museum AND TAKE THE KIDS!

p.s. to San Diegans: The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) always has FREE admission to everyone under 25!

Want to see even more? Check out this 5-minute video.

Enjoy!

Kelly’s ‘Stained Glass’

Kelly’s ‘stained glass’ sun made with watercolors and black glue.

Kelly from Skyline School brought these beautiful ‘stained glass windows’ made with fluorescent liquid watercolor and black glue. As a final step, her students rubbed their artwork with baby oil and a cotton ball to make the paper translucent. Primary grades used a paper plate tracer to make the sun. Upper elementary made the geometric window (note: upper grade students used carbon paper to transfer their symmetric designs).

Kelly’s ‘Stained Glass Window’ made with watercolor and black glue.

A New Twist on Monet

Kelly also brought these Monet water-lily paintings. Please zoom in on this painting – the paint texture is so interesting. Kelly didn’t offer a brush – her students applied paint with novelty rings purchased at Oriental Trading. These rings look like little sea urchins. If you try this, Kelly recommends pinching the ring instead of wearing it on her finger. Needless to say, her students LOVED this project!

Kelly’ s students painted their Monet-inspired art with a ring from Oriental Trading.

30-Minute Color Mixing

Nancy  teaches art at Solana Highlands School. She brought a color mixing project. Students used two colors plus black and white. After tinting, shading and creating a neutral, they drizzled black glue over the top. I love how much variety her students achieved. Some of these abstract compositions look like animal patterns. LOVE! Even more impressive: Nancy only has 30 minutes with her students. She does a lot of stations and table rotations to fit her projects in the tight time frame.

Kindergarten Paper Quilts

Nancy did these paper quilt squares with the kindergarten. The kindergarteners start with a 6″ square of paper. They collage first, then Nancy adds holes with a three-hole punch. Next class, the kindergartener lace the holes. Nancy glues the squares together into a quilt.

As always, I am FLOORED by my colleagues creativity. They always have interesting, challenging, beautiful projects – and they teach them so well. Thanks to Nancy and Kelly for sharing your ideas.

Enjoy!

Are you looking for an engaging, NEAT color project? Try these analogous color chameleons, made with watercolor paper scraps and Crayola markers.

Materials

• Color wheels
• Watercolor (or drawing paper) scraps
• Sharpies (or other black permanent markers)
• Crayola markers (or other fine tip watercolor marker)
• Brush
• Water
• Construction paper
• Construction paper crayons
• Pipe cleaners
• White glue

We began by watching this FUN chameleon video

We did a directed draw of the chameleon using Sharpie on watercolor paper. Second graders then added their own details – stripes, patterns, dots, horns, and spikes.

Next I passed out the color wheels and Crayola markers. We talked about analogous colors as ‘next door neighbors’ on the color wheel. I asked the students to select three analogous color markers and lay them out on their color wheels.

Students checked their neighbor’s work to make sure all the markers were analogous colors.

We used the ‘marker painting’ technique I learned on the fabulous Artisan Des Artes blog. Students outlined the interior of their their chameleons with the markers, then went over the lines with plain water and a small paintbrush. The kids LOVED it when their markers turned to ‘paint’ and spread through the watercolor paper.

To finish the project, we cut out the chameleons and glued them to simple habitats drawn with crayon on construction paper. For a final touch, some student glued on a curled pipe cleaner for a tongue (I will skip that step next year!).

Second grade results:

Guess what…….this project will work even if your markers are a bit dry! It’s a great project for end-of-year or anytime.

Enjoy!

p.s. Here are two books my students LOVED!